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We haven’t seen a true Apple display for a while. Specifically, since mid-2016, when Apple discontinued its 27-inch Thunderbolt Display.

Now it looks like Apple is ready to introduce a new display, one that’s ready to work with upcoming releases like the rumored 2019 Mac Pro. But what’s this new display going to look like, and will it be worth choosing over the many other monitor options on the market? Here’s everything we know about Apple’s plans.

Price and release date

We don’t have any indication of pricing for a new display, but if the rumored specs are close to being accurate, then it’s going to be expensive. This is likely to be a high-resolution screen targeted at professionals, so a price point around a few thousand dollars wouldn’t be unexpected. For reference, the older LG UltraFine 5k, made specifically for Apple, is selling for $1,300.

However, if Apple is serious about pairing the display up with the new Mac Pro (which we’ll discuss more below), then it could easily announce the display at the same time as the Pro. This gives us a couple of different options for a release. Mac Pros are traditionally announced at WWDC in June 2019, so this could be an opportune time — although there’s no current evidence that the Pro will be present quite yet. The other option is for Apple to hold a special event and announce in the fall, just in time for holiday shopping.

Get ready for an incredible resolution

Apple iMac with 5K Retina

Apple’s aiming here on this point. Pike’s Universum, a blog that has made accurate Apple predictions in the past, dropped a post in 2017 that said the new Apple Display would have an 8K resolution. Dell has an 8K monitor out with a 7680 x 4320 resolution, and its selling for around $4,800, which gives you an idea about just how expensive the new Apple Display could be.

However, more recent reporting by Ming-Chi Kuo reports that the Display will be a more modest 6K with a mini-LED backlighting system. This lower resolution is still very high-end, but will help keep prices down so the monitor will be more available for a wider audience.

Leaked image shows familiar design

When Apple announced the new Mac mini, it sent out a number of models to reviewers for a first look. That included a Getting Started guide, but reviewers were quick to notice that this guide included a page with an Apple Display on it. Not only had Apple stopped making its own displays two years ago, but this display had a different look from past displays and iMacs, leading many to assume that it was a picture of an upcoming display Apple.

If this is a leak (Getting Started guides have done this before), then it tells us a few things about the new display. Most importantly, it has far thinner bezels than past models for an edge-to-edge design that saves on space and follows a similar trend to the 2018 MacBook. Otherwise, the design is still very reminiscent of designs for the Thunderbolt Display and the iMac models, suggesting that Apple isn’t trying to completely reinvent the wheel for this model.

As for the screen size, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reports that it is going to be 31.6 inches, an particularly large model for those who need as much display space as possible for their work.

Designed for the Mac Pro

Back in 2017, Phil Schiller, Apple SVP of worldwide marketing at the time, told reporters that, “Since the Mac Pro is a modular system, we are also doing a pro display.” Apple has not contradicted this statement in the following year and a half, so it’s reasonable to assume this is still the case.

That means that there is a new Apple Display in the works, and it’s being designed with the Mac Pro and similar systems in mind. That means it’s likely to have a focus on professional design work, editing, and related applications that require a high-end monitor. Apple also intends for this display to easily fit into the “modular” approach to the Mac Pro, which says that it should work well with Apple devices in more complex arrangements. Screen-sharing and similar features may be a focus.

Thunderbolt isn’t going anywhere

Since Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C can be the same port, there’s no reason to think this new display won’t have Thunderbolt connectivity. In fact, it’s likely to have multiple Thunderbolt 3 ports to facilitate more complicated Apple-based setups.

As for other ports, well, the display could include more generic USB-C ports, and HDMI is always an option to help increase usability.

An integrated GPU is still a possibility

When the last Thunderbolt Display was discontinued, a rumor sprang up that Apple’s new display would include an integrated GPU. There haven’t been any follow-up rumors to this report, but it would be an interesting move for Apple.

It would also signify a display made to work with all sorts of Apple products without as many challenges — such as the new Mac mini or MacBooks. This could certainly happen if that’s the direction Apple wants to push.

Netflix finally pulled the plug on the last two house-produced Marvel Defenders shows remaining on the streaming service, announcing that The Punisher is finished after its second season (which hit the service a month ago) and that Jessica Jones will conclude after the release of its upcoming third season.

The Marvel-licensed shows that Netflix produced will not be leaving the service, despite there being no new episodes, so you can still re-watch any action you missed from the various superheroes and villains surrounding each of Netflix’s Defenders.

“Marvel’s The Punisher will not return for a third season on Netflix,” Netflix told Deadline. “Showrunner Steve Lightfoot, the terrific crew, and exceptional cast including star Jon Bernthal, delivered an acclaimed and compelling series for fans, and we are proud to showcase their work on Netflix for years to come.”

The company had similarly positive things to say about the cast and crew of Jessica Jones. “We are grateful to showrunner Melissa Rosenberg, star Krysten Ritter and the entire cast and crew, for three incredible seasons of this groundbreaking series, which was recognized by the Peabody Awards among many others.”

This concludes a fruitful half-decade of production partnerships between Marvel and Netflix, with critically acclaimed shows like Daredevil helping to increase the attention to the on-demand streamers’ original programming.

For now, fans of Marvel shows can re-watch the episodes still on the service and look forward to Jessica Jones season 3, which will premiere later this year. They can also anticipate Marvel TV’s new deal with Hulu, which will see four new series and one special coming to the fellow on-demand streamer. And we’re probably very likely to see lots of Marvel content on Disney’s upcoming Disney+ streaming service when it launches in the coming months.

The Japanese conglomerate SoftBank and Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi state investment company, have a closely intertwined relationship, and it’s one that the two are further cementing. According to the Financial Times, SoftBank has just provided half of a new $400 million fund from Mubadala that aims to back European startups.

Industry observers might remember that Mubadala committed $15 billion to SoftBank’s massive Vision Fund as it was first being put together in 2017. Soon after, Mubadala opened a San Francisco-office, as well as structured a $400 million fund designed to invest in early-stage startups. The move was meant to enable Mubadala to oversee the money it committed to SoftBank; it also asked SoftBank to commit capital to the fund, which it reportedly did.

The pact was understandable, including because Mubadala’s early-stage fund could theoretically provide SoftBank with a better idea of what’s happening at companies that are earlier in their trajectories than SoftBank typically sees.

The newer fund appears to be raising questions, however. At least, the FT notes that the timing is “unusual” given that SoftBank is currently saddled with $154 billion in gross debt. The new fund also “raises the prospect that Mubadala’s influence with the Vision Fund will only grow by allowing it to shape SoftBank’s tech investments,” according to the FT’s sources.

SoftBank may not have much choice but to work increasingly closely with Abu Dhabi. As the company’s CEO, Masayoshi Son, said earlier this month, the Vision Fund has spent about $50 billion of its approximately $99 billion in capital. Given the rate at which it has been investing (it just plugged nearly $1 billion into a company last week), its remaining funds might not last through 2020.

Meanwhile, it isn’t clear whether SoftBank enjoys the solid relationship that it once did with the Vision Fund’s biggest anchor investment, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which provided SoftBank with a $45 billion commitment for its current fund and that SoftBank was largely counting on to be its anchor investor in a second Vision Fund.

On October 3rd of last year, Bloomberg journalists talked with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (or MBS), and he said he planned to invest a further $45 billion in SoftBank. Yet what few knew then was that five days earlier, journalist and Saudi regime critic Jamal Khashoggi had vanished after going into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. As questions, and concern, began to spread over MBS’s involvement in the disappearance, many business executives canceled plans to visit Riyadh, where Saudi Arabia hosted an investment conference in the middle of October.

Son was among them, even as he tried hedging his bets by visiting privately with MBS in Riyadh the night before the event began. Whether that move angered MBS remains to be seen, as does whether the murder and more unflattering attention paid to Saudi Arabia because of it is impacting where SoftBank can invest its capital.

Son, for his part, declined to say earlier this month whether he would consider taking more money from Saudi sources — which is perhaps telling in itself.

According to the FT, Mubadala will use its new fund to write checks to European startups of between $5 million and $30 million. And as with Mubadala’s San Francisco-based team, the idea appears to be to act as a funnel for SoftBank’s Vision Fund, steering it deals that Mubadala’s team sees as the most promising in its portfolio.

Mubadala’s European venture fund will be run out of a new office in London, which is expected to open this spring. The Vision Fund is currently also headquartered in London, with another office in San Francisco and soon, offices expected in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong.

WireGuard could be the most promising VPN protocol in years. It lets you establish a connection with a VPN server that is supposed to be faster, more secure and more flexible at the same time. The developers launched a brand new app in the Mac App Store today.

WireGuard isn’t a VPN service, it’s a VPN protocol, just like OpenVPN or IPsec. The best thing about it is that it can maintain a VPN connection even if you change your Wi-Fi network, plug an Ethernet cable or your laptop goes to sleep.

But if you want to use WireGuard for your VPN connection you need to have a VPN server that supports it, and a device that supports connecting to it. You can already download the WireGuard app on Android and iOS, but today’s release is all about macOS.

The team behind WireGuard has been working on a macOS implementation for a while. But it wasn’t as straightforward as an app. You could install wireguard-tools using Homebrew and then establish a connection using a command line in the Terminal.

It’s much easier now as you just have to download an app in the Mac App Store and add your server profile. The app is a dropdown menu in the menubar. You can manage your tunnel and activate on-demand connections for some scenarios. For instance, you could choose to activate your VPN exclusively if you’re connected to the internet using Wi-Fi, and not Ethernet.

I tried the app and it’s as snappy and reliable as expected. The app leverages Apple’s standard Network Extension API to add VPN tunnels to the network panel in the settings.

If you want to try out WireGuard yourself, I recommend building your own VPN server using Algo VPN. Don’t trust any VPN company that sells you a subscription or lets you access free VPN servers. A VPN company can see all your internet traffic on their own servers, which is a big security risk

Assume that those companies analyze your browsing habits, sell them to advertisers, inject their own ads on non-secure pages or steal your identity. The worst of them can hand to authorities a ton of data about your online life.

They lie in privacy policies and often don’t even have an About page with the names of people working for those companies. They spend a ton of money buying reviews and endorsements. You should avoid VPN companies at all costs.

If you absolutely need a VPN server because you can’t trust the Wi-Fi network or you’re traveling to a country with censored websites, make sure you trust the server.

Alfa Romeo has one of the most impressive motor-sports pedigrees of any automaker, but decades away from top-tier racing eroded its credibility. Alfa sought to recapture past glory with a return to Formula One in 2018, and it’s doubling down on its commitment to the world’s most prestigious racing series for 2019.

With testing for the 2019 F1 season about to get underway, Alfa unveiled this year’s race car, dubbed the C38. Like last year, the car is uses a Ferrari powertrain, or “power unit,” as they are referred to in F1. All F1 cars use a 1.6-liter turbocharged V6 engine teamed with a hybrid system that can harvest electric power from the brakes or exhaust.

Alfa returned to F1 as the title sponsor of the Swiss Sauber team, but for 2019 the Italian automaker doesn’t want to share the spotlight. The Sauber name has been dropped; the team now calls itself Alfa Romeo Racing. However, the “structure, ownership, and management” of the team remain unchanged, according to Alfa. So while some teams, like Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari, and Renault, are run by their respective automakers, Alfa Romeo Racing is still basically a marketing exercise.

The team may still be independent, but it will continue to function as a B-squad for Ferrari, just as it did in 2018. In addition to using Ferrari power units, Alfa is being used to field up-and-coming Ferrari drivers, who can gain experience in F1 before joining the Ferrari team. In 2018, as Alfa Romeo Sauber, the team ran Charles Leclerc, who joins the Ferrari team for 2019. This season, Alfa’s driver lineup includes Antonio Giovinazzi, a Ferrari protege who is looking to follow in Leclerc’s footsteps.

The team’s other driver is Kimi Raikkonen, a veteran driver who vacated his seat at Ferrari to make way for Leclerc. Switching to Alfa is effectively a demotion for Raikkonen, who won the F1 drivers’ championship in 2007. But it will also allow the popular driver, known as “The Iceman” for his cool demeanor, to stave off retirement and finish off his career at the team where it started in 2001.

Alfa Romeo has a long racing history that stretches back long before the first F1 championship. Enzo Ferrari got his start running Alfa’s Grand Prix racing team in the prewar years when Alfa race cars claimed many victories. Alfa drivers won the first two F1 championships, in 1950 and 1951. The Italian automaker continued in F1 as both a team and an engine supplier into the 1980s. A new line of performance road cars provided the impetus for a return.

But even with that pedigree and a world-champion driver in the lineup, don’t expect much from Alfa Romeo Racing in 2019. The team’s partnership with Ferrari means it will continue playing second fiddle to its corporate cousin. Despite the branding of a well-known automaker, the team also lacks the resources to compete at the front of the field. In 26 years of racing in F1 as Sauber, it has only one a single race and that was with the full technical and financial might of BMW behind it.

The nature of F1 means that only a handful of teams can compete for wins and championships. Since the current hybrid-powertrain rules took effect in 2014, the things have been even more skewed, with Mercedes-Benz handily winning the drivers’ and constructors’ championships every year since. With even large factory-run teams struggling to break Mercedes’ iron grip, it’s unlikely that Alfa Romeo will return to the top step of the podium anytime soon.

Perlick brings a bigger, bolder version of its high-tech fridge to KBIS 2019

http://bit.ly/2DQywqt

We thought Perlick’s monster, 24-inch column refrigerator was a big boy when it debuted at last year’s KBIS 2018, but now the food and beverage storage manufacturer is bringing an absolute monolith of a refrigerator to this year’s show. The company’s flagship product for this year is a 30-inch-wide column refrigerator and it’s the big daddy of Perlick’s family of full-size refrigerators, freezers, and wine fridges.

As with its predecessors, one of the main benefits of Perlick’s design is its proprietary QuatroCool technology, a preservation system that covers a so-far unmatched four separate temperature zones. Features include the ability to store food at 32-degrees F, a dual-chamber air filtration, and electronically monitored real humidity.

“Prior to the full-size residential product launch, Perlick spent a century designing, engineering, and manufacturing front-of-house wine reserves for fine bars, restaurants, and large venues around the world,” said Stephanie Muraro-Gust, Perlick’s product marketing manager, in a release. “We leveraged that experience when designing the 30-inch refrigerator, ensuring fresh ingredients are stored with the same care and precision as the most-prized wine collections.”

Photo Courtesy of Perlick

Other features include the company’s innovative tip-out produce bin that is quite a step up over all of our old-school crisping drawers. In addition to electronically monitoring the humidity in the storage area, the technology can sense when produce is aging and losing water content and automatically push moisture back into the produce bin, extending the shelf life of leafy greens and other wilt-prone veggies.

The innovative dual filtration system features an advanced carbon filter that removes odors from the air (Trader Joe’s peeled garlic packers, I’m looking at you), while an ethylene filter scrubs the air of harmful ethylene gas, which can accelerate the ripening process of common fruits and vegetables including bananas, cantaloupes, cucumbers, parsley and more. Ethylene is released by a lot of fruit including apples, cantaloupe, grapes and tomatoes, among others.

Design-wise, Perlick’s new fridge is almost impossibly sleek. The unit’s PerlIQ touchscreen control features a black design that disappears into the background until it wakes up with a touch. Users can customize temperature preferences or engage smart temperature settings for deli items, meat/fish, and fresh produce, optimizing temperatures for specific ingredients.

Photo Courtesy of Perlick

For those particular about materials and lighting, the refrigerator is clad in Perlick’s signature stainless steel up top, with slate-black stainless steel on the lower half, which not only makes it look cool, but is also nonporous and easier to clean.

As it stands, there is no price listed for Perlick’s new monster fridge, but its predecessors range in price from around $3,800 for a smaller model to nearly $7,000 for its restaurant-grade panel refrigerators, so expect this big boy to come in somewhere in the middle. KBIS guests can see it for themselves at Perlick’s booth (N1909) this week. The 30-inch refrigerator is available for immediate order.

Nissan is using old Leaf batteries to power and connect off-the-grid campers

http://bit.ly/2DO8QLe

Nissan has partially solved the problem of recycling the battery packs used to power electric cars. The Japanese firm teamed up with trailer manufacturer Opus to develop a portable, weather-resistant power pack that prolongs the life of first-generation Leaf batteries while keeping tech-savvy adventurers juiced up off the grid.

Called Roam, the pack takes the form of a rectangular device that’s smaller than a carry-on suitcase. Cracking it open reveals lithium-ion cells sourced from the battery packs of first-generation Leaf electric cars that have reached the end of their life cycle. These cells give the Roam a storage capacity of 700Wh, which is enough power for about a week’s worth of use.

The Roam keeps mobile devices and other portable accessories charged, even if the nearest plug outlet is 100 miles away. Its flap hides a pair of outlets, four USB ports, and a lone USB-C port for faster charging. Nissan explained its partnership with Opus gives the Roam the ability to inflate a six-person Air trailer in a matter of minutes. It also powers the trailer’s mobile Wi-Fi feature and Bluetooth sound system, and it feeds electricity to the on-board, 12-volt battery.

Campers have several ways to recharge the pack, including at least one that’s sustainable. The Roam is compatible with an available 400-watt solar panel that fully recharges its pack in two to four hours. This is the most practical solution, because it lets users charge the Roam right where they parked, and Nissan factored two solar charges into the week-long range it quoted. Those camping in an area where sunlight is rare will need to charge the Roam by plugging it into a standard, 230-volt outlet and waiting for about an hour. Depending on the location, this solution might require hauling it closer to something resembling civilization.

The Opus-compatible Nissan Roam will go on sale in select European markets in 2019. Pricing hasn’t been announced yet, and we don’t know whether it will be offered in the United States. Opus distributes some of its products in America, and Nissan is certainly present here, so seeing the Roam on our shores is not out of the question. And, as early examples of the original Leaf approach the 10-year mark, we expect Nissan and other companies will continue to find creative, sustainable ways to recycle battery packs.

Nvidia promises DLSS at low resolutions will be ‘top priority’ in future updates

http://bit.ly/2BGOpPX

Nvidia has made it clear that it’s aware of the problems its deep learning super sampling (DLSS) technology is causing for some gamers, especially at lower resolutions and it has pledged to fix them. The FAQ for the Tensor-core powered visual tweak suggests that Nvidia was making its improvement a “top priority,” particularly when running DLSS at resolutions lower than 4K.

DLSS seemed like it would be a far more impactful technology than ray tracing (in a positive way, at least) when Nvidia announced the pair of them with its launch of the RTX Turing graphics cards in 2018. Since then, though, we have got our hands on a few games with either or both technologies and DLSS has proven to be detrimental to visuals in the worst cases and barely useful in the best of them. Especially at resolutions other than 4K.

Blurry frames, stuttering, and oversharpening are just some of the visual artifacts and problems Nvidia users have been seeing. Fortunately, Nvidia acknowledged that these problems exist and pledged to fix them.

“We have seen the [blurry] screenshots and are listening to the community’s feedback about DLSS at lower resolutions, and are focusing on it as a top priority,” Nvidia said in its updated DLSS FAQ, via TechSpot. “We are adding more training data and some new techniques to improve quality, and will continue to train the deep neural network so that it improves over time.”

It goes on to explain that the reason DLSS is less effective at lower resolutions is that the artificial intelligence algorithm that makes DLSS possible requires source data to build the eventual (and ideally prettier) visuals from. With a 4K image, it has upwards of 4 million pixels to leverage to that end. With 1080P gameplay though, it’s restricted to just north of 1 million pixels, which in some games appears to cause the algorithm to be a bit overzealous with its smoothing tricks.

For the two flagship games that have introduced DLSS in recent months, Battlefield V and Metro Exodus, Nvidia already has plans for new patches to introduce improvements to DLSS. Although the release of neither patch was revealed, we are told that they will improve compatibility with lower and ultrawide resolutions, and increase the sharpness in Metro Exodus specifically, where we noted significant blurring with DLSS enabled on the latest Nvidia driver available at the time.

The question is, though, whether this is too little too late? We’re almost six months on from the release of the RTX Turing cards and the only two mainstream games that take advantage of both new RTX technologies are poor examples of them. Alongside high pricing, this could be why Nvidia has faced poor sales of its Turing GPUs.

YouTube under fire for recommending videos of kids with inappropriate comments

https://tcrn.ch/2DR48wl

More than a year on from a child safety content moderation scandal on YouTube and it takes just a few clicks for the platform’s recommendation algorithms to redirect a search for “bikini haul” videos of adult women towards clips of scantily clad minors engaged in body contorting gymnastics or taking an icebath or ice lolly sucking “challenge”.

A YouTube creator called Matt Watson flagged the issue in a critical Reddit post, saying he found scores of videos of kids where YouTube users are trading inappropriate comments and timestamps below the fold, denouncing the company for failing to prevent what he describes as a “soft-core pedophilia ring” from operating in plain sight on its platform.

He has also posted a YouTube video demonstrating how the platform’s recommendation algorithm pushes users into what he dubs a pedophilia “wormhole”, accusing the company of facilitating and monetizing the sexual exploitation of children.

We were easily able to replicate the YouTube algorithm’s behavior that Watson describes in a history-cleared private browser session which, after clicking on two videos of adult women in bikinis, suggested we watch a video called “sweet sixteen pool party”.

Clicking on that led YouTube’s side-bar to serve up multiple videos of prepubescent girls in its ‘up next’ section where the algorithm tees-up related content to encourage users to keep clicking.

Videos we got recommended in this side-bar included thumbnails showing young girls demonstrating gymnastics poses, showing off their “morning routines”, or licking popsicles or ice lollies.

Watson said it was easy for him to find videos containing inappropriate/predatory comments, including sexually suggestive emoji and timestamps that appear intended to highlight, shortcut and share the most compromising positions and/or moments in the videos of the minors.

We also found multiple examples of timestamps and inappropriate comments on videos of children that YouTube’s algorithm recommended we watch.

Some comments by other YouTube users denounced those making sexually suggestive remarks about the children in the videos.

Back in November 2017 several major advertisers froze spending on YouTube’s platform after an investigation by the BBC and the Times discovered similarly obscene comments on videos of children.

Some of the videos of young girls that YouTube recommended we watch had already had comments disabled — which suggests its AI had previously identified a large number of inappropriate comments being shared (on account of its policy of switching off comments on clips containing kids when comments are deemed “inappropriate”) — yet the videos themselves were still being suggested for viewing in a test search that originated with the phrase “bikini haul”.

Watson also says he found ads being displayed on some videos of kids containing inappropriate comments, and claims he found links to child pornography being shared in YouTube comments.

We were unable to verify those findings in our brief tests.

We asked YouTube why its algorithms skew towards recommending videos of minors, even when the viewer starts by watching videos of adult women, and why inappropriate comments remain a problem on videos of minors more than a year after the same issue was highlighted via investigative journalism.

The company sent us the following statement in response to our questions:

Any content — including comments — that endangers minors is abhorrent and we have clear policies prohibiting this on YouTube. We enforce these policies aggressively, reporting it to the relevant authorities, removing it from our platform and terminating accounts. We continue to invest heavily in technology, teams and partnerships with charities to tackle this issue. We have strict policies that govern where we allow ads to appear and we enforce these policies vigorously. When we find content that is in violation of our policies, we immediately stop serving ads or remove it altogether.

A spokesman for YouTube also told us it’s reviewing its policies in light of what Watson had highlighted, adding that it’s in the process of reviewing the specific videos and comments featured in his video — specifying that some content has been taken down as a result of the review.

Although the spokesman also emphasized that the majority of the videos flagged by Watson are innocent recordings of children doing everyday things. (Though of course the problem is that innocent content is being repurposed and time-sliced for abusive gratification and exploitation.)

The spokesman added that YouTube works with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to report accounts found making inappropriate comments about kids to law enforcement.

In wider discussion about the issue the spokesman also told us that determining context remains a challenge for its AI moderation systems.

On the human moderation front he said the platform now has around 10,000 human reviewers tasked with assessing content flagged for review.

The volume of video content uploaded to YouTube is around 400 hours per minute, he added.

There is still clearly a massive asymmetry around content moderation on user generated content platforms, with AI poorly suited to plug the gap given ongoing weakness in understanding context, even as platforms’ human moderation teams remain hopelessly under-resourced and outgunned vs the scale of the task.

Another key point YouTube failed to mention is the clear tension between advertising-based business models, which monetize content based on viewer engagement, and content safety issues that need to carefully consider the substance of the content and the context it’s been consumed in.

It’s certainly not the first time YouTube’s recommendation algorithms have been called out for negative impacts. In recent years the platform has been accused of automating radicalization by pushing viewers towards extremist and even terrorist content — which led YouTube to announce another policy change in 2017 related to how it handles content created by known extremists.

The wider societal impact of algorithmic suggestions that inflate conspiracy theories and/or promote bogus, anti-factual health or scientific content have also been repeatedly raised as a concern.

And only last month YouTube said it would reduce recommendations of what it dubbed “borderline content” and content that “could misinform users in harmful ways”, citing examples such as videos promoting a fake miracle cure for a serious illness, or claiming the earth is flat, or making “blatantly false claims” about historic events such as the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York.

“While this shift will apply to less than one percent of the content on YouTube, we believe that limiting the recommendation of these types of videos will mean a better experience for the YouTube community,” it wrote then. “As always, people can still access all videos that comply with our Community Guidelines and, when relevant, these videos may appear in recommendations for channel subscribers and in search results. We think this change strikes a balance between maintaining a platform for free speech and living up to our responsibility to users.”

YouTube said that change of algorithmic recommendations around conspiracy videos would be gradual, and only initially affect recommendations on a small set of videos in the US.

It also noted that implementing the tweak to its recommendation engine would involve both machine learning tech and human evaluators and experts helping to train the AI systems.

“Over time, as our systems become more accurate, we’ll roll this change out to more countries. It’s just another step in an ongoing process, but it reflects our commitment and sense of responsibility to improve the recommendations experience on YouTube,” it added.

It remains to be seen whether YouTube will expand on that policy shift and decide it needs to exercise greater responsibility in how its platform recommends and serves up videos of children for remote consumption in future.

Political pressure may be one motivating force, with momentum building for regulation of online platforms — including calls for Internet companies to face clear legal liabilities and even a legal duty care towards users vis-a-vis the content they distribute and monetize.

UK regulators have made legislating on Internet and social media safety a policy priority — with the government due to publish a White Paper setting out its plans for ruling platforms this winter.

Apple has always been an evolving company. While it never really invented any product categories, it always seemed to make those product categories work better and smarter. It also found a way to make us want them, even when they were more expensive. Today, the WSJ reports, it’s trying to find its way to a future without the iPhone at the center of its revenue model.

This shift happens as Apple reported lower revenue for the first time in years against a backdrop of flagging iPhone demand. Part of the problem is a shifting Chinese market, but it’s also due to people simply taking longer to refresh their phones. As that happens, and the price of iPhones soared over $1000, there has been a decline in sales.

With iPhone sales down 15 percent, this was not a typical Apple earnings report, but it was something that company had anticipated when it announced lower Q1 guidance at the beginning of the year. If the Wall Street Journal story is accurate, Apple is already trying to take steps to move the company into its next phase, possibly as a services business.

If that’s the case, it would mark a radical departure from the company’s history in which it has redesigned various types of hardware, bucking popular design trends along the way. Back in the 1970s and 1980s when it was called Apple Computer, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak made computers with a GUI when most people were working from DOS prompt.

In the early 2000s, Apple came out with an MP3 player called the iPod and opened a music store called iTunes. By 2006, the year before it would introduce the iPhone, Apple had sold over 42 million units and 850 million songs. It was a combination of hardware and services that helped transform a flagging company into a powerhouse.

In 2007 when Apple introduced the iPhone, it knew that it would begin to eat into iPod sales, and it eventually did, but it didn’t matter because it was the next logical step forward. When it introduced the App Store in 2008, the iPhone became more than a stand-alone piece of hardware. It was a new kind of hardware-service model and it would generate incredible wealth for the company.

The iPad came along in 2009 and the Apple Watch five years later in 2014. While each has done reasonably well, nothing has touched the success of the iPhone. Keep in mind that analysts estimated that Apple sold 71 million iPhones last quarter, and this was in a quarter in which sales declined. It’s hard to sell 71 million units of anything in a three month period and have it be a down quarter.

What comes next is probably some combination of entertainment/content and making use of advancing technologies like AR/VR, driverless cars and artificial intelligence. It’s unclear what direction Apple will take in these areas, but we do know that recent hires and acquisitions point in these directions.

There has long been speculation that Apple could make a splashy acquisition in the content area. When Eddie Cue, Apple senior vice president of Internet software and services was interviewed by CNN’s Dylan Buyers at South by Southwest last year, Buyers specifically asked Cue about buying a property like Netflix or Disney. He implied that it was about taking the Apple TV and combining that with a big-name content production company.

Cue indicated that the two companies were great partners, but he wasn’t ready to commit to anything along those lines. “Generally, in the history of Apple, we haven’t made huge acquisitions.” He went onto explain from Apple’s perspective, it wants to figure out where the future is and to build something to get it there, rather than buying something that is working for the current state of affairs.

It’s worth noting that Apple TV has not matched the huge success of its other devices, but service revenue has been growing steadily. In the most recent earnings report, Apple reported services revenue of $10.9 billion, up 19 percent year over year. That’s still a small percentage of the overall $84.3 billion the company reported for the quarter, but it is growing.

Regardless, nobody can know if Apple can approach the success with any product that it has had with the iPhone. But it knows that in spite of its vast riches, it’s dangerous for any company to rest on its past success. So it looks ahead and hires new blood and looks for a future with less dependence on the iPhone because it knows, as the Grateful Dead once sang, “You can’t go back and you can’t stand still. If the thunder won’t get you, then the lightning will.” Apple is hoping to avoid that fate, and perhaps it is some new combination of hardware, content and services that could lead the way.